Project: This is not a museum!  Year: 2018, Type: open international competition Program: sea museum Area: 20.000m2 Architecture: Opposite Office, Team: Benedikt Hartl Place: Sezchan, China

For the international competition for a new Museum of the Oceans, we altered and reduced the given spatial program so that, instead of the requested museum spaces, a plastic recycling plant was designed.

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Humanity is increasingly encroaching on the habitat of the oceans. Why do we want to build a Museum of the Oceans? Isn’t it enough that we are already destroying them? Do we also want to watch it happen live? Preferably through a fully glazed, high-security viewing pane, as used in numerous new projects by the architectural elite? Or perhaps an underwater restaurant from which we can gawk at sharks, whales, and colorful schools of fish? Is that what we call the evolutionary superiority of humankind?

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Shouldn’t we instead be trying to preserve our oceans? Overfishing, plastic pollution, and the ongoing destruction of habitats in coral reefs, the open ocean, shallow seas, and coastal areas have reduced the populations of many marine species to their lowest levels in human memory. The climate crisis is adding even more stress to the seas.

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So instead of planning a (environmentally harmful) new building on the coast of Portugal—as the competition brief called for—we propose building a floating recycling facility that both cleans the sea and raises public awareness about ocean pollution. The plant filters plastic waste from the water and produces recycled boats for the seawater swimming pool, as well as souvenirs for visitors. The offshore museum in the Atlantic is accessible only via our recycling boats—turning the museum visit into a real adventure!

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Unfortunately, our proposal—submitted among more than 100 entries—did not win first place, but hey, at least we received an Honorable Mention. Apparently, the pseudo-sustainable bourgeois does appreciate truly sustainable ideas after all!